[SOLVED] Decent place holder GPU, for new build, until new Nvidias are back in stock.

[Twistfaria]

I’m building a new system and really want to have either the 3080 or the 3090 in it but they are out of stock until who knows when. Sadly many of the other Nvidia cards are also currently out of stock too.
I’ve always had AMD and decided I want to go Nvidia for this system that will by my alternate system. My monitor will be my Vizio M series Quantum 55inch 4K TV. Meaning as long as I’m using it I’ll have to go through HDMI 2.0b as it doesn’t have display port. Correct me if I’m wrong but as I understand it that limits it to 120 hertz. Ideally my ultimate GPU will be able to handle playing games at near Ultra settings in 4K with at least 60 FPS but of course for that I’ll need one of the newer Nvidia cards that I can’t get at the moment. Since I have no experience with Nvidia cards I’d like advice on a decent placeholder card. It doesn’t have to do 4K but 1440p would be nice. Since it’s a placeholder I’d prefer not to spend a ridiculous amount seeing as I will be spending an arm and a leg on a 3090 if that’s what I decide on later! Any advice would be cool. Any thoughts on the part list would be ok too, nothing is totally set in stone!

Current part list:
I have a rtx 2070 on here but it is no longer available either!

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 3.5 GHz 16-Core Processor ($709.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Water 3.0 360 ARGB Sync Edition 56.45 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($163.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus PRIME X570-PRO ATX AM4 Motherboard ($230.99 @ Walmart)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 64 GB (4 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory ($362.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($289.74 @ B&H)
Storage: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($289.74 @ B&H)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB GAMING OC 3X Video Card
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox TD500 Mesh w/ Controller ATX Mid Tower Case ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G1+ 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($189.94 @ Office Depot)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($108.78 @ Other World Computing)
Wireless Network Adapter: TP-Link TL-WDN4800 PCIe x1 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi Adapter ($159.00 @ Amazon)
Case Fan: Cooler Master MasterFan MF120R 59 CFM 120 mm Fan ($21.98 @ Amazon)
Keyboard: Logitech G613 Wireless Standard Keyboard ($79.36 @ Amazon)
Mouse: Logitech G502 LIGHTSPEED Wireless Optical Mouse ($119.63 @ Amazon)
UPS: Tripp Lite OMNI1500LCDT UPS ($150.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $2977.11
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-18 01:11 EDT-0400

 

[siaan312]

Wait.

You have a 2070?

Is that not a good enough "place holder" gpu?

If you don't actually have it and I read this wrong:
Don't waste your money on an actual decent card just as a place holder for 2 weeks.
Get a cheapo 20 dollar gt 210 so you can output to a monitor, and do your best to get a 3080.

If you can afford a decent gpu for just a placeholder, why not buy a 3080 or 3090 with scalper prices, and get it now?

 

[NoFaultius]

I would get a cheapo 1070ti on ebay and buy the 3080 as soon as available. 1070ti was a decent 1440 gamer. If you are going to imminently replace it, spend as little as possible.

 

[Twistfaria]

This is for a system I’m building not for something I already have. I meant that the 2070 was something I placed on the list and then it was out of stock too. I don’t have any of these parts yet. What did you mean by 2 weeks? Everything I’ve read says that both the 3080 and 3090 will be hard to get for the foreseeable future (possibly months). Even if I had money to burn I wouldn’t buy a card for twice what it is worth from a scalper!

Thanks for the suggestion NoFaultius I’ll look into that card. Any thoughts on the rest of the part list?

 

[NoFaultius]

This is for a system I’m building not for something I already have. I meant that the 2070 was something I placed on the list and then it was out of stock too. I don’t have any of these parts yet. What did you mean by 2 weeks? Everything I’ve read says that both the 3080 and 3090 will be hard to get for the foreseeable future (possibly months). Even if I had money to burn I wouldn’t buy a card for twice what it is worth from a scalper!

Thanks for the suggestion NoFaultius I’ll look into that card. Any thoughts on the rest of the part list?

That is some computer you are building. Total powerhouse. To save a little I usually buy windows 10 license off ebay for $3. Every now and again I get one that doesn't work, but I just buy another because they are so cheap. You should also consider changing that second M2 from a evo+ to a 4GB drive or a cheaper intel 660 2TB. Its just a storage drive as far as I can see. Also consider getting 64GB mem as two 32 GB sticks. That way you can upgrade in the future without changing them all out. Also, why a "n" wifi adapter? That is old and slow. You need "ax". To save space, get a motherboard that already has it integrated in.

 

[Twistfaria]

Well I was thinking about having the 2 2TB M.2s in RAID 0. The 2 sticks of RAM is a great idea that I totally missed so thanks for that. I don’t know much about WiFi cards I mainly chose it because it had some really good reviews, the last one I used was crap. I only really chose that MOBO because I put an Asus Prime pro X470 in my first build and liked it. What about the Asus ROG X570-E Gaming ATX MOBO? It has WiFi included and I do like that it has a heat sink for both M.2s.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Whatever you do don’t listen to anyone who buys cheap windows 10 keys because they’re usually stolen and end up becoming unactivated

The 1079ti sounds like a descent placeholder idea. Also Raid 0 on SSDs makes no sense whatsoever and you will not see any benefit from using it if you’re using it only for games. You would probably only see it in synthetic benchmarks and it adds multiple points of failure if you lose one SSD you lost everything

Raiding SSDs is useless basically

 

[cryoburner]

Since it’s a placeholder I’d prefer not to spend a ridiculous amount seeing as I will be spending an arm and a leg on a 3090 if that’s what I decide on later!

I wouldn't bother considering a 3090 unless you have money to burn, since it's only around 10-15% faster than a 3080 at 4K, with even less of a difference at lower resolutions, despite costing over twice as much. That card is simply a re-branding of what would have previously been marketed as a "Titan", and unless you have professional rendering workloads that can utilize the additional VRAM, then it's arguably a poor choice from a value perspective.

I know you mentioned wanting to try Nvidia for this system, but it might be worth seeing what AMD has to offer with their upcoming high-end cards. They will be announcing them about a week from now on October 28th, with availability expected sometime next month. Supposedly, they will have a card offering performance roughly in the vicinity of a 3080, with 16GB of VRAM. There are still a lot of details that are unclear at the moment though, like exactly where the typical performance will land, what raytracing performance will be like, and exactly how they will be priced. And of course, whether or not launch availability will be better than the 30-series. If it's better though, you might not need to wait months for a card.

And speaking of new AMD launches, their 5000-series Zen3 CPUs will go on sale November 5th, featuring a big improvement in IPC over the 3000-series, with performance in CPU-limited scenarios expected to be over 20% higher on average. (Though when gaming at 4K resolution, you will likely be graphics-limited most of the time) So rather than a 3950X, you should probably be looking at a 5950X. And if you're just gaming, you probably won't actually see much benefit from having 16-cores with 32-threads any time in the near-future, so the 12-core 5900X and 8-core 5800X might also be worth considering. I would expect reviews for those CPUs to start coming out shortly after the new graphics cards get announced.

And as Mandark pointed out, running SSDs in RAID 0 doesn't really tend to make a difference to real-world performance in anything but a few niche (mostly server-related) use-cases. NVMe SSDs are a little faster than SATA SSDs at loading today's games, but beyond that, adding more bandwidth doesn't make any real difference. Even NVMe's performance uplift over SATA isn't nearly as high as the specs might suggest, since today's games are limited more by the rest of the system when loading is taking place. It's possible there could be more of a difference in future titles specially built with fast SSDs in mind, but those might be uncommon for a few years still.

My monitor will be my Vizio M series Quantum 55inch 4K TV. Meaning as long as I’m using it I’ll have to go through HDMI 2.0b as it doesn’t have display port. Correct me if I’m wrong but as I understand it that limits it to 120 hertz.

I'm not entirely certain on that TV, but it may only take 60Hz input, even if it's capable of refreshing the screen at a 120Hz refresh rate. Very few 4K televisions on the market today accept more than a 60Hz input.

 

[Twistfaria]

Thanks for the info on RAID I was unsure of that choice. I do want to use strictly SSDs on this system as I had a former system kill THREE hard drives in the past, 2 of which I still need to do recoveries from. I’ll think about the 5950x, this system is not just for gaming. I also use digital painting programs that make use of the multi cores and the RAM. There could be some 3D modeling in future as well.
My other system has a Vega 64 in it which I like but I think AMD still have some issues with their drivers. That being said I will wait until the AMD cards come out before I decide. I’ve always been team AMD so at least it would be familiar.

Though I doubt Microsoft needs any more money I would never buy a copy from someone on eBay for similar reasons as to why I wouldn’t buy a GPU from a scalper.